


On Miles and BPD (Meta)

by MagicalDragon



Category: Degrassi, Degrassi the Next Generation, Degrassi: Next Class
Genre: Borderline Personality Disorder, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Meta, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 12:25:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16872864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicalDragon/pseuds/MagicalDragon
Summary: Meta on Miles' mental health, with a focus on borderline personality disorder.





	On Miles and BPD (Meta)

The Hollingsworths have all suffered from their abusive upbringing and are still affected by it but in quite different ways

Miles, who always took the brunt of it, is very self-destructive and acts out when he’s upset. He’s learned that he will be blamed no matter what and that quiet statements of dissatisfaction will be ignored, so he’s loud and defiant and flaunts his unhealthy behavior for all to see. It feels safer to him to ruin something before the other person can leave him than to wait for the inevitable abandonment.

Frankie, who could do no wrong so long as she did what she was asked, so long as she was obedient, has learned to stay quiet about her emotions and puts a lot of pressure on herself to always be perfect. The minute she starts worrying she’s not good enough, she worries that the people in her life don’t think she is either. A pressure to always be perfect and an emotional distance has left her needing constant validation from her relationships with others.

Hunter, who has never learned to process his emotions properly, finds it difficult to function socially and expresses every emotion with anger and violence, since that’s the only way he really knows how to express anything.

IMO, Miles and Frankie both have borderline personality disorder, just expressed a bit differently.

Within borderline (bpd) circles, the term "Favourite Person" has become popular, and refers to a person the person with bpd idealises and projects a large part of their self worth on. Splitting technically refers to going from having one extreme opinion on someone to the opposite, but is frequently used as a short hand for going from positives feelings about someone to negative ones (idealisation -> devaluation).

To focus on Miles: If Miles has bpd (or…. is developing it, anyway) it seems pretty clear to me that Maya becomes his Favourite Person just before they get together and remains such most of the way through season 13, which is why it’s so hard for him to move on the first couple of times they break up. 

He probably splits on her after Zoë’s trial, because he can’t process that her yelling at him and leaving him isn’t = her hating him, but is coming from a place of having to take care of herself first. 

Then when he gets together with Tristan, Tristan becomes his Favourite Person, which is why after his dad shoves him the only one he wants to talk to about it is Tristan. Earlier in that ep he also says  _“back at school, where at least one person gives a crap about me”_ , referring to Tristan, which is reminiscent of how he talks about Esme in Next Class.

Then when Tristan holds that intervention, Miles splits on him, and so when Tristan apologises by holding that sushi lunch, Miles isn’t ready to stop devaluing him/begin actually liking him again, even if he has forgiven him. I doubt he’s really still in love with Maya, since at no point after Zoë’s trial does he try to get back together with her. I think he’s not denying having feelings for her for two reasons: 

  1. he’s not sure  _how_ he feels about her
  2. not denying it becomes a convenient way to get out of the whole “I’m still upset with you even though I probably shouldn’t be” thing. 



He’s not talking the whole way through the break up either, he doesn’t try to defend himself. Honestly he looks like he’s just feeling numb. 

What’s going on with him after this is pretty difficult to figure out since he gets so little screen time until Next Class. He seems to start focusing on Zoë towards the end, but that’s clearly gone by the time school starts up again. 

Unlike seemingly a lot of people, I don’t actually think he’s manipulating Tristan in the beginning of Next Class. I mean it might be a small part of it, but I think he geniunely wants to reconnect. He’s very focused on Tristan all the way through the episode and actively seeks out banter with him. Then the debate comes…. and he goes back to devaluing Tristan again. Everything he says at the end of _#bootycall_ is geniune imo - he’s lashing out in that scene, he doesn’t have the control to fabricate. 

He starts hanging out with Esme and he refers to her as “the one person who actually cares about me” which, again, if he’s developing BPD she’s probably his Favourite Person for a while there. 

Even after he gets off the drugs and gets a therapist, she’s the first person he mentions when prompted to name a friend he trusts. That Tristan is the second person he mentions is… interesting. I can’t really pinpoint any reason his feelings about Tristan would have changed, but I imagine a lot of his emotions from before his addiction are pretty muddled up afterwards. 

I can’t really say where Winston fits into all of this. Perhaps the very reason Miles has been able to be friends with Winston for so long is because he hasn’t been Miles’ Favourite Person, so Miles doesn’t tend to idealize and inevitably devalue him. While he jokes about Winston “betraying” him at the trial and making out with Frankie, Miles never shows any signs of being geniunely upset with him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Esme is actually more textbook BPD as of season 4 of Next Class (with some very clear signs earlier on imo) but this was written in 2016.


End file.
